[Footnote 628: Ibid., p. 261.]

[Footnote 629: Albany Evening Journal, January 9, 1861.]

Weed's sincerity remained unquestioned, and his opinion, so ardently supported outside his party, would probably have had weight within his party under other conditions; but the President-elect, with his mind inflexibly made up on the question of extending slavery into the territories, refused to yield the cardinal principle of the Chicago platform. "Entertain no proposition for a compromise in regard to the extension of slavery," he wrote, December 11, to William Kellogg, a member of Congress from Illinois. "The instant you do, they have us under again; all our labour is lost, and sooner or later must be done over.... The tug has to come, and better now than later. You know I think the fugitive slave clause of the Constitution ought to be enforced—to put it in its mildest form, ought not to be resisted."[630] Two days later, in a letter to E.B. Washburne, also an Illinois member of Congress, he objected to the scheme for restoring the Missouri Compromise line. "Let that be done and immediately filibustering and extending slavery recommences. On that point hold firm as a chain of steel."[631] To Weed himself, on December 17, he repeated the same idea in almost the identical language.[632]

[Footnote 630: Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln, Vol. 3, p. 259.]

[Footnote 631: Ibid., Vol. 3, p. 259.]

[Footnote 632: Thurlow Weed Barnes, Life of Thurlow Weed, Vol. 2, pp. 310, 311.]

Thurlow Weed was a journalist of pre-eminent ability, and, although a strenuous, hard hitter, who gave everybody as much sport as he wanted, he was a fair fighter, whom the bitterest critics of the radical Republican press united in praising for his consistency; but his epigrams and incisive arguments, sending a vibrating note of earnestness across the Alleghanies, could not move the modest and, as yet, unknown man of the West, who, unswayed by the fears of Wall Street, and the teachings of the great Whig compromisers, saw with a statesman's clearness the principle that explained the reason for his party's existence.



CHAPTER XXVI

SEYMOUR AND THE PEACE DEMOCRATS

1860-1861

While the contest over secession was raising its crop of disturbance and disorder at Washington, newspapers and politicians in the North continued to discuss public questions from their party standpoints. Republicans inveighed against the madness of pro-slavery leaders, Democrats berated Republicans as the responsible authors of the perils darkening the national skies, and Bell men sought for a compromise. Four days after the election of Lincoln, the Albany Argus clearly and temperately expressed the view generally taken of the secession movement by Democratic journals of New York. "We are not at all surprised at the manifestations of feeling at the South," it said. "We expected and predicted it; and for so doing were charged by the Republican press with favouring disunion; while, in fact, we simply correctly appreciated the feeling of that section of the Union. We sympathise with and justify the South, as far as this—their rights have been invaded to the extreme limit possible within the forms of the Constitution; and, if we deemed it certain that the real animus of the Republican party could become the permanent policy of the nation, we should think that all the instincts of self-preservation and of manhood rightfully impelled them to resort to revolution and a separation from the Union, and we would applaud them and wish them God-speed in the adoption of such a remedy."[633]

[Footnote 633: Albany Argus, November 10, 1860. On November 12 the Rochester Union argued that the threatened secession of the slave States was but a counterpoise of the personal liberty bills and other measures of antagonism to slave-holding at the North. See, also, the New York Herald, November 9.]

This was published in the heat of party conflict and Democratic defeat, when writers assumed that a compromise, if any adjustment was needed, would, of course, be forthcoming as in 1850. A little later, as conditions became more threatening, the talk of peaceable secession growing out of a disinclination to accept civil war, commended itself to persons who thought a peaceful dissolution of the Union, if the slave-holding South should seek it, preferable to such an alternative.[634] But as the spectre of dismemberment of the nation came nearer, concessions to the South as expressed in the Weed plan, and, later, in the Crittenden compromise, commended itself to a large part of the people. A majority of the voters at the preceding election undoubtedly favoured such an adjustment. The votes cast for Douglas, Bell, and Breckenridge in the free States, with one-fourth of those cast for Lincoln, and one-fourth for Breckenridge in the slave States, making 2,848,792 out of a total of 4,662,170, said a writer in Appleton's Cyclopaedia, "were overwhelmingly in favour of conciliation, forbearance, and compromise."[635] Rhodes, the historian, approving this estimate, expresses the belief that the Crittenden compromise, if submitted to the people, would have commanded such a vote.[636]

[Footnote 634: Morgan Dix, Memoirs of John A. Dix, Vol. 1, p. 338.]

[Footnote 635: Appleton's Cyclopaedia, 1861, p. 700.]

[Footnote 636: James F. Rhodes, History of the United States, Vol. 3, p. 261, note.]

In the closing months of 1860, and the opening months of 1861, this belief dominated the Democratic party as well as a large number of conservative Republicans; but, as the winter passed without substantial progress toward an effective compromise, the cloud of trouble assumed larger proportions and an alarmist spirit spread abroad. After Major Anderson, on the night of December 27, had transferred his command from its exposed position at Fort Moultrie to the stronger one at Fort Sumter, it was not uncommon to hear upon the streets disloyal sentiments blended with those of willing sacrifice to maintain the Union. This condition was accentuated by the action of the Legislature, which convened on January 2, 1861, with twenty-three Republicans and nine Democrats in the Senate, and ninety-three Republicans and thirty-five Democrats in the House. In his message, Governor Morgan urged moderation and conciliation. "Let New York," he said, "set an example; let her oppose no barrier, but let her representatives in Congress give ready support to any just and honourable sentiment; let her stand in hostility to none, but extend the hand of friendship to all, cordially uniting with other members of the Confederacy in proclaiming and enforcing a determination that the Constitution shall be honoured and the Union of the States be preserved."

On January 7, five days after this dignified and conservative appeal, Fernando Wood, imitating the example of South Carolina, advocated the secession of the city from the State. "Why should not New York City," said the Mayor, as if playing the part of a satirist, "instead of supporting by her contributions in revenue two-thirds of the expenses of the United States, become, also, equally independent? As a free city, with a nominal duty on imports, her local government could be supported without taxation upon her people.... Thus we could live free from taxes, and have cheap goods nearly duty free.... When disunion has become a fixed and certain fact, why may not New York disrupt the bands which bind her to a venal and corrupt master—to a people and a party that have plundered her revenues, attempted to ruin her commerce, taken away the power of self-government, and destroyed the confederacy of which she was the proud empire city."[637]

[Footnote 637: Proceedings of the Board of Aldermen, LXXXI: p. 25, 26. New York Herald, January 8.]

By order of a sympathising common council, this absurd message, printed in pamphlet form, was distributed among the people. Few, however, took it seriously. "Fernando Wood," said the Tribune, "evidently wants to be a traitor; it is lack of courage only that makes him content with being a blackguard."[638] The next day Confederate forts fired upon the Star of the West while endeavouring to convey troops and supplies to Fort Sumter.

[Footnote 638: New York Tribune, January 8, 1861.]

The jar of the Mayor's message and the roar of hostile guns were quickly followed by the passage, through the Legislature, of a concurrent resolution, tendering the President "whatever aid in men and money may be required to enable him to enforce the laws and uphold the authority of the Federal Government; and that, in the defence of the Union, which has conferred prosperity and happiness upon the American people, renewing the pledge given and redeemed by our fathers, we are ready to devote our fortunes, our lives, and our sacred honour."[639] This resolution undoubtedly expressed the overwhelming preponderance of sentiment in the State,[640] but its defiant tone, blended with the foolish words of Wood and the menacing act of South Carolina, called forth greater efforts for compromise, to the accomplishment of which a mammoth petition, signed by the leading business men of the State, was sent to Congress, praying that "measures, either of direct legislation or of amendment of the Constitution, may be speedily adopted, which, we are assured, will restore peace to our agitated country."[641]

[Footnote 639: Appleton's Cyclopaedia, 1861, p. 700.]

[Footnote 640: "The whole people in this part of the country are waiting with impatience for your assumption of the great office to which the suffrage of a free people has called you, and will hail you as a deliverer from treason and anarchy. In New York City all classes and parties are rapidly uniting in this sentiment, and here in Albany, where I am spending a few days in attendance upon Court, the general tone of feeling and thinking about public affairs shows little difference between Republicans and Democrats."—W.M. Evarts to Abraham Lincoln, January 15, 1861. Unpublished letter on file in Department of State at Washington.]

[Footnote 641: Appleton's Cyclopaedia, 1861, p. 520.]

On January 18, a meeting of the merchants of New York City, held in the Chamber of Commerce, unanimously adopted a memorial, addressed to Congress, urging the acceptance of the Crittenden compromise. Similar action to maintain peace in an honourable way was taken in other cities of the State, while congressmen were daily loaded with appeals favouring any compromise that would keep the peace. Among other petitions of this character, Elbridge G. Spaulding presented one from Buffalo, signed by Millard Fillmore, Henry W. Rogers, and three thousand others. On January 24, Governor Morgan received resolutions, passed by the General Assembly of Virginia, inviting the State, through its Legislature, to send commissioners to a peace conference to be held at Washington on February 4. Nothing had occurred in the intervening weeks to change the sentiment of the Legislature, expressed earlier in the session; but, after much discussion and many delays, it was resolved, in acceding to the request of Virginia, that "it is not to be understood that this Legislature approves of the propositions submitted, or concedes the propriety of their adoption by the proposed convention. But while adhering to the position she has heretofore occupied, New York will not reject an invitation to a conference, which, by bringing together the men of both sections, holds out the possibility of an honourable settlement of our national difficulties, and the restoration of peace and harmony to the country."

The balloting for commissioners resulted in the election of David Dudley Field, William Curtis Noyes, James S. Wadsworth, James C. Smith, Amaziah B. James, Erastus Corning, Francis Granger, Greene C. Bronson, William E. Dodge, John A. King, and John E. Wool, with the proviso, however, that they were to take no part in the proceedings unless a majority of the non-slave-holding States were represented. The appearance of Francis Granger upon the commission was the act of Thurlow Weed. Granger, happy in his retirement at Canandaigua, had been out of office and out of politics so many years that, as he said in a letter to the editor of the Evening Journal, "it is with the greatest repugnance that I think of again appearing before the public."[642] But Weed urged him, and Granger accepted "the flattering honour."[643] Thus, after many years of estrangement, the leader of the Woolies clasped hands again with the chief of the Silver-Grays.

[Footnote 642: Thurlow Weed Barnes, Life of Thurlow Weed, Vol. 2, p. 317.]

[Footnote 643: Thurlow Weed Barnes, Life of Thurlow Weed, Vol. 2, p. 318.]

Though a trifling event in itself, the detention of thirty-eight boxes of muskets by the New York police kept the people conscious of the strained relations between the States. The ownership of the guns, left for shipment to Savannah, would ordinarily have been promptly settled in a local court; but the detention now became an affair of national importance, involving the governors of two States and leading to the seizure of half a dozen merchant vessels lying peacefully at anchor in Savannah harbour. Instead of entering the courts, the consignor telegraphed the consignees of the "seizure," the consignees notified Governor Brown of Georgia, and the Governor wired Governor Morgan of New York, demanding their immediate release. Receiving no reply to his message, Brown, in retaliation, ordered the seizure of all vessels at Savannah belonging to citizens of New York. Although Governor Morgan gave the affair no attention beyond advising the vessel owners that their rights must be prosecuted in the United States courts, the shipment of the muskets and the release of the vessels soon closed the incident; but Brown's indecent zeal to give the episode an international character by forcing into notice the offensive assumption of an independent sovereignty, had much influence in hardening the "no compromise" attitude of many Northern people.

Nevertheless, the men of New York who desired peace on any honourable terms, seemed to grow more earnest as the alarm in the public mind became more intense. South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi had now seceded, and, as a last appeal to them, a monster and notable Union meeting, held at Cooper Institute on January 28 and addressed by eminent men of all parties, designated James T. Brady, Cornelius K. Garrison, and Appleton Oaksmith, as commissioners to confer with delegates to the conventions of these seceding States "in regard to measures best calculated to restore the peace and integrity of this Union."[644] Scarcely had the meeting adjourned, however, before John A. Dix, as secretary of the treasury, thrilled the country by his fearless and historic dispatch, "If any one attempts to haul down the American flag, shoot him on the spot."

[Footnote 644: Appleton's Cyclopaedia, 1861, p. 520.]

Dix had brought to the Cabinet the training of a soldier and of a wise, prudent, sagacious statesman of undaunted courage and integrity. With the exception of his connection with the Barnburners in 1848, he had been an exponent of the old Democratic traditions, and, next to Horatio Seymour, did more, probably, than any other man to bring about a reunion of his party in 1852. Nevertheless, the Southern politicians never forgave him. President Pierce offered him the position of secretary of state, and then withdrew it with the promise of sending him as minister to France; but the South again defeated him. From that time until his appointment as postmaster of New York, following the discovery, in May, 1860, of Isaac V. Fowler's colossal defalcation,[645] Dix had taken little part in politics. If the President, however, needed a man of his ability and honesty in the crisis precipitated by Fowler's embezzlement, such characteristics were more in demand, in January, 1861, at the treasury, when the government was compelled to pay twelve per cent. for a loan of five millions, while New York State sevens were taken at an average of 101-1/4.[646] Bankers refused longer to furnish money until the Cabinet contained men upon whom the friends of the government and the Union could rely, and Buchanan, yielding to the inevitable, appointed the man clearly indicated by the financiers.[647]

[Footnote 645: Fowler, who was appointed postmaster of New York by President Pierce, began a system of embezzlements in 1855, which amounted, at the time of his removal, to $155,000.—Report of Postmaster-General Holt, Senate Document, 36th Congress, 1st Session, XI., 48. "In one year Fowler's bill at the New York Hotel, which he made the Democratic headquarters, amounted to $25,000. His brother, John Walker Fowler, clerk to Surrogate Tucker, subsequently absconded with $31,079, belonging to orphans and others."—Gustavus Myers, History of Tammany Hall, pp. 232, 233.]

[Footnote 646: John Jay Knox, United States Notes, p. 76.]

[Footnote 647: New York Evening Post, December 26, 1860.

"On Tuesday, January 8, my father received a dispatch from the President to come at once to the White House. He went immediately and was offered the War Department. This he declined, informing Mr. Buchanan, as had been agreed upon, that at that moment he could be of no service to him in any position except that of the Treasury Department, and that he would accept no other post. The President asked for time. The following day he had Mr. Philip Thomas's resignation in his hand, and sent General Dix's name to the Senate. It was instantly confirmed."—Morgan Dix, Memoirs of John A. Dix, Vol. 1, p. 362.]

Although now sixty-three years old, with the energy and pluck of his soldier days, Dix had no ambition to be in advance of his party. He favoured the Crittenden compromise, advocated Southern rights under the limits of the Constitution, and wrote to leaders in the South with the familiarity of an old friend. "I recall occasions," wrote his son, "when my father spoke to me on the questions of the day, disclosing the grave trouble that possessed his thoughts. On one such occasion he referred to the possibility that New York might become a free city, entirely independent, in case of a general breakup;[648] not that he advocated the idea, but he placed it in the category of possibilities. It was his opinion that a separation, if sought by the South through peaceful means alone, must be conceded by the North, as an evil less than that of war.... Above all else, however, next to God, he loved the country and the flag. He did everything in his power to avert the final catastrophe. But when the question was reduced to that simple, lucid proposition presented by the leaders of secession, he had but one answer, and gave it with an emphasis and in words which were as lightning coming out of the east and shining even unto the west."[649]

[Footnote 648: The plan advocated by Fernando Wood in his annual message to the Common Council, referred to on p. 348.]

[Footnote 649: Morgan Dix, Memoirs of John A. Dix, Vol. 1, pp. 336, 343.]

From the day of his appointment to the Treasury to the end of the Administration, Dix resided at the White House as the guest of the President, and under his influence, coupled with that of Black, Holt, and Stanton, Buchanan assumed a more positive tone in dealing with secession. Heretofore, with the exception of Major Anderson's movements at Fort Sumter, and Lieutenant Slemmer's daring act at Fort Pickens, the seizure of federal property had gone on without opposition or much noise; but now, at last, a prominent New Yorker, well known to every public man in the State, had flashed a patriotic order into the heart of the Southern Confederacy, startling the country into a realising sense of the likelihood of civil war.

In the midst of this excitement, a state convention, called by the Democratic state committee and composed of four delegates from each assembly district, representing the party of Douglas, of Breckenridge, and of Bell and Everett, assembled at Albany on January 31. Tweddle Hall was scarcely large enough to contain those who longed to be present at this peace conference. Of the prominent public men of the Commonwealth belonging to the three parties, the major part seemed to make up the assemblage, which Greeley pronounced "the strongest and most imposing ever convened within the State."[650] On the platform sat Horatio Seymour, Amasa J. Parker, and William Kelley, the Softs' recent candidate for governor, while half a hundred men flanked them on either side, who had been chosen to seats in Congress, in the Legislature, and to other places of honour. "No convention which had nominations to make, or patronage to dispose of, was ever so influentially constituted."[651]

[Footnote 650: Horace Greeley, The American Conflict, Vol. 1, p. 388.]

[Footnote 651: Ibid., p. 388.]

Sanford E. Church of Albion became temporary chairman, and Amasa J. Parker, president. Parker had passed his day of running for office, but, still in the prime of life, only fifty-four years old, his abilities ran with swiftness along many channels of industry. In stating the object of the convention, the vociferous applause which greeted his declaration that the people of the State, demanding a peaceful settlement of the questions leading to disunion, have a right to insist upon conciliation and compromise, disclosed the almost unanimous sentiment of the meeting; but the after-discussion developed differences that anticipated the disruption that was to come to the Democratic party three months later. One speaker justified Southern secession by urgent considerations of necessity and safety; another scouted the idea of coercing a seceding State; to a third, peaceful separation, though painful and humiliating, seemed the only safe and honourable way. Reuben H. Walworth, the venerable ex-chancellor, declared that civil war, instead of restoring the Union, would forever defeat its reconstruction. "It would be as brutal," he said, "to send men to butcher our own brethren of the Southern States, as it would be to massacre them in the Northern States."

Horatio Seymour received the heartiest greeting. Whether for good or evil, according to the standards by which his critics may judge him, he swayed the minds of his party to a degree that was unequalled among his contemporaries. For ten years his name had been the most intimately associated with party policies, and his influence the most potent. The exciting events of the past three months, with six States out of the Union and revolution already begun, had profoundly stirred him. He had followed the proceedings of Congress, he had studied the disposition of the South, he understood the sentiment in the North, and his appeal for a compromise, without committing himself to some of the extravagances which were poured forth in absolute good faith by Walworth, earned him enthusiastic commendation from friends and admirers. "The question is simply this," he said; "Shall we have compromise after war, or compromise without war?" He eulogised the valour of the South, he declared a blockade of its extended sea coast nearly impossible, he hinted that successful coercion by the North might not be less revolutionary than successful secession by the South, he predicted the ruin of Northern industries, and he scolded Congress, urging upon it a compromise—not to pacify seceding States, but to save border States. "The cry of 'No compromise' is false in morals," he declared; "it is treason to the spirit of the Constitution; it is infidelity in religion; the cross itself is a compromise, and is pleaded by many who refuse all charity to their fellow-citizens. It is the vital principle of social existence; it unites the family circle; it sustains the church, and upholds nationalities.... But the Republicans complain that, having won a victory, we ask them to surrender its fruits. We do not wish them to give up any political advantage. We urge measures which are demanded by the hour and the safety of our Union. Are they making sacrifices, when they do that which is required by the common welfare?"[652]

[Footnote 652: Albany Argus, February 1, 1861.

William H. Russell, correspondent of the London Times, who dined with Horatio Seymour, Samuel J. Tilden and George Bancroft, wrote that "the result left on my mind by their conversation and arguments was that, according to the Constitution, the government could not employ force to prevent secession, or to compel States which had seceded by the will of the people to acknowledge the federal power."—Entry March 17, Diary, p. 20.]

It remained for George W. Clinton of Buffalo, the son of the illustrious DeWitt Clinton, to lift the meeting to the higher plane of genuine loyalty to the Union. Clinton was a Hard in politics. He had stood with John A. Dix and Daniel S. Dickinson, had been defeated for lieutenant-governor on their ticket, and had supported Breckenridge; but when the fateful moment arrived at which a decision had to be made for or against the country, his genius, like the prescience of Dix, guided him rightly. "Let us conciliate our erring brethren," he said, "who, under a strange delusion, have, as they say, seceded from us; but, for God's sake, do not let us humble the glorious government under which we have been so happy and which will yet do so much for the happiness of mankind. Gentlemen, I hate to use a word that will offend my Southern brother, but we have reached a time when, as a man—if you please, as a Democrat—I must use plain terms. There is no such thing as legal secession. The Constitution of these United States was intended to form a firm and perpetual Union. If secession be not lawful, then, what is it? I use the term reluctantly but truly—it is rebellion! rebellion against the noblest government man ever framed for his own benefit and for the benefit of the world. What is it—this secession? I am not speaking of the men. I love the men, but I hate treason. What is it but nullification by the wholesale? I have venerated Andrew Jackson, and my blood boiled, in old time, when that brave patriot and soldier of Democracy said—'the Union, it must and shall be preserved.' (Loud applause.) Preserve it? Why should we preserve it, if it would be the thing these gentlemen would make it? Why should we love a government that has no dignity and no power? Look at it for a moment. Congress, for just cause, declares war, but one State says, 'War is not for me—I secede.' And so another and another, and the government is rendered powerless. I am not prepared to humble the general government at the feet of the seceding States. I am unwilling to say to the government, 'You must abandon your property, you must cease to collect the revenues, because you are threatened.' In other words, gentlemen, it seems to me—and I know I speak the wishes of my constituents—that, while I abhor coercion, in one sense, as war, I wish to preserve the dignity of the government of these United States as well."[653]

[Footnote 653: Horace Greeley, The American Conflict, Vol. 1, p. 394.

"When rebellion actually began many loyal Democrats came nobly out and planted themselves by the side of the country. But those who clung to the party organisation, what did they do? A month before Mr. Lincoln was inaugurated they held a state convention for the Democratic party of the State of New York. It was said it was to save the country,—it was whispered it was to save the party. The state committee called it and representative men gathered to attend it.... They applauded to the echo the very blasphemy of treason, but they attempted by points of order to silence DeWitt Clinton's son because he dared to raise his voice for the Constitution of his country and to call rebellion by its proper name."—Speech of Roscoe Conkling, September 26, 1862, A.R. Conkling, Life and Letters of Roscoe Conkling, p. 180.]

The applause that greeted these loyal sentences disclosed a patriotic sentiment, which, until then, had found no opportunity for expression; yet the convention, in adopting a series of resolutions, was of one mind on the question of submitting the Crittenden compromise to a direct vote of the people. "Their voice," said the chairman, "will be omnipresent here, and if it be raised in time it may be effectual elsewhere."

There is something almost pathetic in the history of these efforts which were made during the progress of secession, to avert, if possible, the coming shock. The great peace conference, assembled by the action of Virginia, belongs to these painful and wasted endeavours. On February 4, the day that delegates from six cotton States assembled at Montgomery to form a Southern confederacy, one hundred and thirty-three commissioners, representing twenty-one States, of which fourteen were non-slave-holding, met at Washington and continued in session, sitting with closed doors, until the 27th. It was a body of great dignity—a "fossil convention," the Tribune called it—whose proceedings, because of the desire in the public mind to avoid civil war, attracted wide attention. David Dudley Field represented New York on the committee on resolutions, which proposed an amendment of seven sections to the Constitution. On February 26, these were taken up in their order for passage. The first section provided for the restoration of the Missouri Compromise line under the then existing conditions, provided that whenever a new State was formed north or south of that line it should be admitted with or without slavery, as its constitution might declare. This was the important concession; but, though it was less favourable to the South than the Crittenden compromise, it failed to satisfy the radical Republicans, who had from the first opposed the convention. Accordingly, the vote, taken by States, stood eight to eleven against it, New York being included among the noes. The next morning, however, after agreeing to a reconsideration of the question, the convention passed the section by a vote of nine to eight, New York, divided by the absence of David Dudley Field, being without a voice in its determination. Field never fully recovered from this apparent breach of trust.[654] In committee, he had earnestly opposed the proposed amendment, talking almost incessantly for three weeks, but, at the supreme moment, when the report came up for passage, he withdrew from the convention, without explanation, thus depriving his State of a vote upon all the sections save one, because of an evenly divided delegation.

[Footnote 654: See New York Tribune, March 23, 1861, for Field's statement in defence of his action. Also Tribune, March 7, for John A. King's charges.]

The convention, however, was doomed to failure before Field left it. Very early in its life the eloquent New Yorker, assisting to rob it of any power for good, declared his opposition to any amendment to the Constitution. "The Union," he said, "is indissoluble, and no State can secede. I will lay down my life for it.... We must have the arbitration of reason, or the arbitrament of the sword." Amaziah B. James, another New Yorker, possessed the same plainness of speech. "The North will not enter upon war until the South forces it to do so," he said, mildly. "But when you begin it, the government will carry it on until the Union is restored and its enemies put down."[655] If any stronger Union sentiment were needed, the remarks of Salmon P. Chase of Ohio, in disclosing the attitude of his party, supplied it. "The election of Lincoln," he said, "must be regarded as the triumph of principles cherished in the hearts of the people of the free States. Chief among these principles is the restriction of slavery within State limits; not war upon slavery within those limits, but fixed opposition to its extension beyond them. By a fair and unquestionable majority we have secured that triumph. Do you think we, who represent this majority, will throw it away? Do you think the people would sustain us if we undertook to throw it away?"[656]

[Footnote 655: Lucius E. Chittenden, Report of Proceedings of Peace Conference, pp. 157, 170, 303, 428.]

[Footnote 656: Lucius E. Chittenden, Report of Proceedings of Peace Conference, p. 304.]

After three weeks of such talk, even Virginia, whose share in forming the Union exceeded that of any other State, manifested its discouragement by repudiating the proposed amendment as an insufficient guarantee for bringing back the cotton States or holding the border States. When, finally, on March 4, the result of the conference was offered in the United States Senate, only seven votes were cast in its favour. So faded and died the last great effort for compromise and peace. For months it must have been apparent to every one that the party of Lincoln would not yield the cornerstone of its principles. It desired peace, was quick to co-operate, and ready to conciliate, but its purpose to preserve free territory for free labour remained fixed and unalterable.



CHAPTER XXVII

WEED'S REVENGE UPON GREELEY

1861

In the winter of 1860-61, while the country was drifting into civil war, a desperate struggle was going on at Albany to elect a United States senator in place of William H. Seward, whose term expired on the fourth of March. After the defeat of the Senator at Chicago, sentiment settled upon his return to Washington; but when Lincoln offered him the position of secretary of state, Thurlow Weed announced William M. Evarts as his candidate for the United States Senate. Evarts was now forty-three years of age. Born in Boston, a graduate of Yale, and of the Harvard law school, he had been a successful lawyer at the New York bar for twenty years. Union College had conferred upon him, in 1857, the degree of Doctor of Laws, and the rare ability and marvellous persistence manifested in the Lemmon slave case, in which he was opposed by Charles O'Conor, had given abundant evidence of the great intellectual powers that subsequently distinguished him. He had, also, other claims to recognition. The wit and great learning that made him the most charming of conversationalists increased his popularity, while his love of books, his excellent taste, and good manners made him welcome in the club and the social circle. Indeed, he seems to have possessed almost every gift and grace that nature and fortune could bestow, giving him high place among his contemporaries.

Evarts had not then held office. The places that O'Conor and Brady had accepted presented no attractions for him; nor did he seem to desire the varied political careers that had distinguished other brilliant young members of the New York bar. But he had taken pleasure in bringing to his party a wisdom in council which was only equalled by his power in debate. If this service were insufficient to establish his right to the exalted preferment he now sought, his recent valuable work at the Chicago convention was enough to satisfy Thurlow Weed, at least, that generous assistance of such surpassing value should be richly rewarded.

Up to this time, Weed's authority in his party in the State had been supreme. He failed to have his way in 1846 when John Young seized the nomination for governor, and some confusion existed as to his influence in the convention that selected Myron Clark in 1854; but for all practical purposes Weed had controlled the Whig and Republican parties since their formation, almost without dissent. Circumstances sometimes favoured him. The hard times of 1837 made possible Seward's election as governor; the split in the Democratic party over the canal, and later over the Wilmot Proviso, secured Seward a seat in the United States Senate; and the sudden and wholly unexpected repeal of the Missouri Compromise defeated the Silver-Grays and aided in rapidly reducing the strength of the Know-Nothings; but these changes in the political situation, although letting Weed's party into power, burdened his leadership with serious problems. It required a master hand safely to guide a party between the Radical and Abolition factions on one side and the Conservatives on the other, and his signal success commended him to President Lincoln, who frequently counselled with him, often inviting him to Washington by telegram during the darkest days of civil war.

But the defection of Greeley, supplemented by William Cullen Bryant and the union of radical leaders who came from the Democratic party, finally blossomed into successful rebellion at Chicago. This encouraged Greeley to lead one at Albany. The Legislature had one hundred and sixteen Republican members, requiring fifty-nine to nominate in caucus. Evarts could count on forty-two and Greeley upon about as many. In his effort to secure the remaining seventeen, Weed discovered that Ira Harris had a considerable following, who were indisposed to affiliate with Evarts, while several assemblymen indicated a preference for other candidates. This precipitated a battle royal. Greeley did not personally appear in Albany, but he scorned none of the ordinary crafts of party management. Charles A. Dana, then of the Tribune, represented him, and local leaders from various parts of the State rallied to his standard and industriously prosecuted his canvass. Their slogan was "down with the Dictator." It mattered not that they had approved Weed's management in the past, their fight now proposed to end the one-man power, and every place-hunter who could not secure patronage under Lincoln's administration if Evarts went to the Senate, ranged himself against Weed. On the side of the Tribune's editor, also, stood the independent, whose dislike of a party boss always encourages him to strike whenever the way is open to deal an effective blow. This was Greeley's great strength. It marshalled itself.

Weed summoned all his hosts. Moses H. Grinnell, Simeon Draper, and A. Oakey Hall led the charge, flanked by a cloud of state and county officials, and an army of politicians who filled the hotels and crowded the lobbies of the capitol. The Tribune estimated Evarts' backers at not less than one thousand.[657] For two weeks the battle raged with all the characteristics of an intense personal conflict. Greeley declared it "a conflict which was to determine whether a dynasty was to stand and give law to its subjects, or be overthrown and annihilated. Fully appreciating this, not Richmond at Bosworth Field, Charles at Naseby, nor Napoleon at Waterloo made a more desperate fight for empire than did the one-man power at Albany to retain the sceptre it has wielded for so many years over the politics and placemen of this State."[658] In their desperation both sides appealed to the President-elect, who refused to be drawn into the struggle. "Justice to all" was his answer to Weed. "I have said nothing more particular to any one."[659]

[Footnote 657: New York Tribune, February 5, 1861.]

[Footnote 658: Ibid., February 5, 1861.]

[Footnote 659: Thurlow Weed Barnes, Life of Thurlow Weed, Vol. 2, p. 324.]

As the canvass grew older, it became known that several of Harris' supporters would go to Greeley whenever their assistance would nominate him. This sacrifice, however, was not to be made so long as Harris held the balance of power; and since Weed's desire to defeat Greeley was well understood, Harris counted with some degree of certainty upon Evarts' supporters whenever a serious break threatened. Weed's relations with Harris were not cordial. For years they had lived in Albany, and as early as 1846 their ways began to diverge; but Harris' character for wisdom, learning, and integrity compelled respect. He had been an assemblyman in 1844 and 1845, a state senator in 1846, a delegate to the constitutional convention of 1846, and a justice of the Supreme Court from 1847 to 1859. His name was familiar throughout the State. From the time he took up the cause of the Anti-Renters in 1846 he had possessed the confidence of the common people, and his great fairness and courtesy upon the bench had added largely to his reputation. He was without any pretence to oratory. The gifts that made Evarts a leader of the New York bar for three decades did not belong to him; but everybody knew that in the United States Senate he would do as much as Evarts to uphold President Lincoln.

The caucus convened on the evening of February 4. Only one member was absent. Weed and Evarts sat with Governor Morgan in the executive chamber—Harris in the rooms of Lieutenant-Governor Campbell at Congress Hall. The first ballot gave Evarts 42, Greeley 40, Harris 20, with 13 scattering. Bets had been made that Evarts would get 50, and some over-sanguine ones fixed it at 60. What Weed expected does not appear; but the second ballot, which reduced Evarts to 39 and raised Greeley to 42, did not please Speaker Littlejohn, who carried orders between the executive and assembly chambers. It seemed to doom Evarts to ultimate defeat. The chamber grew dark with the gloomy frowns of men who had failed to move their stubborn representatives. The next four ballots, quickly taken, showed little progress, but the seventh raised Greeley to 47 and dropped Harris to 19, while Evarts held on at 39. An assurance that the object of their labours would be reached with the assistance of some of Harris' votes on the next ballot, made the friends of Greeley jubilant. It was equally apparent to the astonished followers of the grim manager who was smoking vehemently in the executive chamber, that Evarts would be unable to weather another ballot. A crisis, therefore, was inevitable, but it was the crisis for which Weed had been waiting and watching, and without hesitation he sent word to elect Harris.[660] This settled it. Greeley received 49, Harris 60, with 6 scattering. Weed did not get all he wanted, but he got revenge.

[Footnote 660: "Pale as ashes, Weed sat smoking a cigar within earshot of the bustle in the crowded assembly room where the caucus sat. Littlejohn stalked over the heads of the spectators and reported to Weed. Unmindful of the fact that he had a cigar in his mouth, Weed lighted another and put it in, then rose in great excitement and said to Littlejohn, 'Tell the Evarts men to go right over to Harris—to Harris—to HARRIS!' The order was given in the caucus. They wheeled into line like Napoleon's Old Guard, and Harris was nominated."—H.B. Stanton, Random Recollections, p. 218.]

There were reasons other than revenge, however, that induced men vigorously opposed to secession to resent the candidacy of Horace Greeley.[661] The editor of the Tribune certainly did not want the Southern States to secede, nor did he favour secession, as has often been charged, but his peculiar treatment of the question immediately after the November election gave the would-be secessionists comfort, if it did not absolutely invite and encourage the South to believe in the possibility of peaceable secession.

[Footnote 661: "It is quite possible that the Tribune's articles of November, 1860, cost Greeley the senatorship."—James F. Rhodes, History of the United States, Vol. 3, p. 142.]

Greeley seems to have taken failure with apparent serenity. He professed to regard it as the downfall of Weed rather than the defeat of himself. His friends who knew of the antagonistic relations long existing between Harris and Weed, said the Tribune, exultingly, were willing to see Harris nominated, since "he would become an agent for the accomplishment of their main purpose—the overthrow of the dictatorship, and the establishment upon its ruins of the principle of political independence in thought and action."[662] But whatever its influence upon Weed, the nomination of Harris was a bitter disappointment to Greeley. He was extraordinarily ambitious for public preferment. The character or duties of the office seemed to make little difference to him. Congressman, senator, governor, lieutenant-governor, comptroller of state, and President of the United States, at one time or another greatly attracted him, and to gain any one of them he willingly lent his name or gave up his time; but never did he come so near reaching the goal of his ambition as in February, 1861. The promise of Harris' supporters to transfer their votes encouraged a confidence that was not misplaced. The Greeley men were elated, the more ardent entertaining no doubt that the eighth ballot would bring victory; and, had Weed delayed a moment longer, Greeley must have been a United States senator. But Weed did not delay, and Greeley closed his life with an office-holding record of ninety days in Congress. Like George Borrow, he seemed never to realise that his simple, clear, vigorous English was to be the crown of an undying fame.[663]

[Footnote 662: New York Tribune, February 5, 1861.]

[Footnote 663: "It is one of the curiosities of human nature that Greeley, who exceeded in influence many of our Presidents, should have hankered so constantly for office. It is strange enough that the man who wrote as a dictator of public opinion in the Tribune on the 9th of November could write two days later the letter to Seward, dissolving the political firm of Seward, Weed, and Greeley. In that letter the petulance of the office-seeker is shown, and the grievous disappointment that he did not get the nomination for lieutenant-governor, which went to Raymond, stands out plainly."—James F. Rhodes, History of the United States, Vol. 2, p. 72.]



CHAPTER XXVIII

LINCOLN, SEWARD, AND THE UNION

1860-1861

As the day approached for the opening of Congress on Monday, December 3, 1860, William H. Seward left Auburn for Washington. At this time he possessed the most powerful influence of any one in the Republican party. While other leaders, his rivals in eloquence and his peers in ability, exercised great authority, the wisdom of no one was more widely appreciated, or more frequently drawn upon. "Sumner, Trumbull, and Wade," says McClure, speaking from personal acquaintance, "had intellectual force, but Trumbull was a judge rather than a politician, Wade was oppressively blunt, and Sumner cultivated an ideal statesmanship that placed him outside the line of practical politics. Fessenden was more nearly a copy of Seward in temperament and discretion, but readily conceded the masterly ability of his colleague. Seward was not magnetic like Clay or Blaine, but he knew how to make all welcome who came within range of his presence."[664]

[Footnote 664: Alex. K. McClure, Recollections of Half a Century, pp. 213, 214.]

Thus far, since the election, Seward had remained silent upon the issues that now began to disturb the nation. Writing to Thurlow Weed on November 18, 1860, he declared he was "without schemes or plans, hopes, desires, or fears for the future, that need trouble anybody so far as I am concerned."[665] Nevertheless, he had scarcely reached the capital before he discovered that he was charged with being the author of Weed's compromise policy. "Here's a muss," he wrote, on December 3. "Republican members stopped at the Tribune office on their way, and when they all lamented your articles, Dana told them they were not yours but mine; that I 'wanted to make a great compromise like Clay and Webster.'"[666]

[Footnote 665: F.W. Seward, Life of W.H. Seward, Vol. 2, p. 478.]

[Footnote 666: Thurlow Weed Barnes, Life of Thurlow Weed, Vol. 2, p. 308.]

To Republicans it did not seem possible that Weed's plan of conciliation, so carefully and ably presented, could be published without the assistance, or, at least, the approval of his warm personal and political friend,—an impression that gained readier credence because of the prompt acquiescence of the New York Times and the Courier. Seward, however, quickly punctured Charles A. Dana's misinformation, and continued to keep his own counsels. "I talk very little, and nothing in detail," he wrote his wife, on December 2; "but I am engaged busily in studying and gathering my thoughts for the Union."[667] To Weed, on the same day, he gave the political situation. "South Carolina is committed. Georgia will debate, but she probably follows South Carolina. Mississippi and Alabama likely to follow.... Members are coming in, all in confusion. Nothing can be agreed on in advance, but silence for the present, which I have insisted must not be sullen, as last year, but respectful and fraternal."[668]

[Footnote 667: F.W. Seward, Life of W.H. Seward, Vol. 2, p. 479.]

[Footnote 668: Thurlow Weed Barnes, Life of Thurlow Weed, Vol. 2, pp. 307, 308.]

Seward, who had now been in Washington several days, had not broken silence even to his Republican colleagues in the Senate, and "to smoke him out," as one of them expressed it, a caucus was called. But it failed of its purpose. "Its real object," he wrote Weed, "was to find out whether I authorised the Evening Journal, Times, and Courier articles. I told them they would know what I think and what I propose when I do myself. The Republican party to-day is as uncompromising as the secessionists in South Carolina. A month hence each may come to think that moderation is wiser."[669]

[Footnote 669: Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 308.]

It is not easy to determine from his correspondence just what was in Seward's mind from the first to the thirteenth of December, but it is plain that he was greatly disturbed. Nothing seemed to please him. Weed's articles perplexed[670] him; his colleagues distrusted[671] him; the debates in the Senate were hasty and feeble;[672] few had any courage or confidence in the Union;[673] and the action of the Sumner radicals annoyed him.[674] Rhodes, the historian, says he was wavering.[675] He was certainly waiting,—probably to hear from Lincoln; but while he waited his epigrammatic criticism of Buchanan's message, which he wrote his wife on December 5, got into the newspapers and struck a popular note. "The message shows conclusively," he said, "that it is the duty of the President to execute the laws—unless somebody opposes him; and that no State has a right to go out of the Union—unless it wants to."[676]

[Footnote 670: "Weed's articles have brought perplexities about me which he, with all his astuteness, did not foresee."—F.W. Seward, Life of W.H. Seward, Vol. 2, p. 480.]

[Footnote 671: "Our senators agree with me to practise reticence and kindness. But others fear that I will figure, and so interfere and derange all."—Ibid., p. 480.]

[Footnote 672: "The debates in the Senate are hasty, feeble, inconclusive and unsatisfactory; presumptuous on the part of the ill-tempered South; feeble and frivolous on the part of the North."—Ibid., p. 481.]

[Footnote 673: "All is apprehension about the Southern demonstrations. No one has any system, few any courage, or confidence in the Union, in this emergency."—Ibid., p. 478.]

[Footnote 674: "Charles Sumner's lecture in New York brought a 'Barnburner' or Buffalo party around him. They gave nine cheers for the passage in which he describes Lafayette as rejecting all and every compromise, and the knowing ones told him those cheers laid out Thurlow Weed, and then he came and told me, of course."—Thurlow Weed Barnes, Life of Thurlow Weed, Vol. 2, p. 308.]

[Footnote 675: "While the evidence is not positive that Seward contemplated heading a movement of Republicans that would have resulted in the acceptance by them of a plan similar in essence to the Crittenden compromise, yet his private correspondence shows that he was wavering, and gives rise to the belief that the pressure of Weed, Raymond, and Webb would have outweighed that of his radical Republican colleagues if he had not been restrained by the unequivocal declarations of Lincoln."—James F. Rhodes, History of the United States, Vol. 3, p. 157.]

[Footnote 676: F.W. Seward, Life of W.H. Seward, Vol. 2, p. 480.]

On December 13 Seward received the desired letter from the President-elect, formally tendering him the office of secretary of state. The proffer was not unexpected. Press and politicians had predicted it and conceded its propriety. "From the day of my nomination at Chicago," Lincoln said, in an informal and confidential letter of the same day, "it has been my purpose to assign you, by your leave, this place in the Administration. I have delayed so long to communicate that purpose, in deference to what appeared to me a proper caution in the case. Nothing has been developed to change my view in the premises; and I now offer you the place in the hope that you will accept it, and with the belief that your position in the public eye, your integrity, ability, learning, and great experience all combine to render it an appointment pre-eminently fit to be made."[677]

[Footnote 677: Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln, Vol. 3, p. 349.]

In the recent campaign Seward had attracted such attention and aroused such enthusiasm, that James Russell Lowell thought his magnanimity, since the result of the convention was known, "a greater ornament to him and a greater honour to his party than his election to the Presidency would have been."[678] Seward's friends had followed his example. "We all feel that New York and the friends of Seward have acted nobly," wrote Leonard Swett to Weed.[679] A month after the offer of the portfolio had been made, Lincoln wrote Seward that "your selection for the state department having become public, I am happy to find scarcely any objection to it. I shall have trouble with every other cabinet appointment—so much so, that I shall have to defer them as long as possible, to avoid being teased into insanity, to make changes."[680]

[Footnote 678: Atlantic Monthly, October, 1860; Lowell's Political Essays, p. 34.]

[Footnote 679: Thurlow Weed Barnes, Life of Thurlow Weed, Vol. 2, p. 301.]

[Footnote 680: F.W. Seward, Life of W.H. Seward, Vol. 2, p. 493.]

In 1849, Seward had thought the post of minister, or even secretary of state, without temptations for him, but, in 1860, amidst the gathering clouds of a grave crisis, the championship of the Union in a great political arena seemed to appeal, in an exceptional degree, to his desire to help guide the destinies of his country; and, after counselling with Weed at Albany, and with his wife at Auburn, he wrote the President-elect that he thought it his duty to accept the appointment.[681] Between the time of its tender and of its acceptance Seward had gained a clear understanding of Lincoln's views; for, after his conference with Weed, the latter visited Springfield and obtained a written statement from the President-elect. This statement has never appeared in print, but it practically embodied the sentiment written Kellogg and Washburn, and which was received by them after Seward left Washington for Auburn.

[Footnote 681: F.W. Seward, Life of W.H. Seward, Vol. 2, pp. 481, 487.]

With this information the Senator returned to the capital, stopping over night at the Astor House in New York, where he unexpectedly found the New England Society celebrating Forefathers' Day. The knowledge of his arrival quickly reached the banqueters. They knew that Weed had seen Lincoln, and that, to hear the tidings from Springfield, Seward had travelled with his friend from Syracuse to Albany. Eagerly, therefore, they pressed him for a speech, for words spoken by the man who would occupy the first place in Lincoln's Cabinet, meant to the business men of the great metropolis, distracted by the disturbed conditions growing out of the disunion movement, words of national salvation. Seward never spoke from impulse. He understood the value of silence and the necessity of thought before utterance. All of his many great speeches were prepared in a most painstaking manner. But, as many members of the society were personal or political friends, he consented to address them, talking briefly and with characteristic optimism, though without disclosing Lincoln's position or his own on the question of compromise. "I know that the necessities which created this Union," he said, in closing, "are stronger to-day than they were when the Union was cemented; and that these necessities are as enduring as the passions of men are short-lived and effervescent. I believe that the cause of secession was as strong, on the night of November 6, when the President and Vice President were elected, as it has been at any time. Some fifty days have now passed; and I believe that every day the sun has set since that time, it has set upon mollified passions and prejudices; and if you will only await the time, sixty more suns will shed a light and illuminate a more cheerful atmosphere."[682]

[Footnote 682: New York Times, December 24, 1860.]

This speech has been severely criticised for its unseemly jest, its exuberant optimism, and its lack of directness. It probably discloses, in the copy published the next morning, more levity than it seemed to possess when spoken, with its inflections and intonations, while its optimism, made up of hopeful generalities which were not true, and of rhetorical phrases that could easily be misapprehended, appeared to sustain the suggestion that he did not realise the critical juncture of affairs. But the assertion that he predicted the "war will be over in sixty days" was a ridiculous perversion of his words. No war existed at that time, and his "sixty suns" plainly referred to the sixty days that must elapse before Lincoln's inauguration. Nevertheless, the "sixty days prediction," as it was called, was repeated and believed for many years.

The feature of the speech that makes it peculiarly interesting, however, is its strength in the advocacy of the Union. Seward believed that he had a difficult role to play. Had he so desired he could not support the restoration of the Missouri Compromise line, for the President-elect had ruled inflexibly against it; neither could he openly oppose it, lest it hurry the South into some overt act of treason before Lincoln's inauguration. So he began exalting the Union, skilfully creating the impression, at least by inference, that he would not support the compromise, although his hearers and readers held to the belief that he would have favoured it had he not submitted to Lincoln's leadership by accepting the state department.

During Seward's absence from Washington he was placed upon the Senate committee of thirteen to consider the Crittenden compromise. It was admitted that the restoration of the Missouri line was the nub of the controversy; that, unless it could be accepted, compromise would fail; and that failure meant certain secession. "War of a most bitter and sanguinary character will be sure to follow," wrote Senator Grimes of Iowa.[683] "The heavens are, indeed, black," said Dawes of Massachusetts, "and an awful storm is gathering. I am well-nigh appalled at its awful and inevitable consequences."[684] Seward did not use words of such alarming significance, but he appreciated the likelihood of secession. On December 26 he wrote Lincoln that "sedition will be growing weaker and loyalty stronger every day from the acts of secession as they occur;" but, in the same letter, he added: "South Carolina has already taken the attitude of defiance. Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana have pushed on to the same attitude. I think that they could not be arrested, even if we should offer all you suggest, and with it the restoration of the Missouri Compromise line."[685] To his wife, also, to whom alone he confided his secret thoughts, he wrote, on the same day: "The South will force on the country the issue that the free States shall admit that slaves are property, and treat them as such, or else there will be a secession."[686]

[Footnote 683: William Salter, Life of James W. Grimes, p. 132. Letter of December 16, 1860.]

[Footnote 684: New York Tribune, December 24, 1860.]

[Footnote 685: F.W. Seward, Life of W.H. Seward, Vol. 2, p. 485.]

[Footnote 686: Ibid., p. 486.]

Nevertheless, the Republican senators of the committee of thirteen, inspired by the firm attitude of Lincoln, voted against the first resolution of the Crittenden compromise. They consented that Congress should have no power either to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia without compensation and the consent of its inhabitants, or to prohibit the transportation of slaves between slave-holding States and territories; but they refused to protect slavery south of the Missouri line, especially since such an amendment, by including future acquisitions of territory, would, as Lincoln declared, popularise filibustering for all south of us. "A year will not pass till we shall have to take Cuba as a condition upon which they will stay in the Union."[687]

[Footnote 687: Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln, Vol. 3, p. 288.]

Upon the failure of the Crittenden compromise, Seward, on the part of the Republicans, offered five propositions, declaring (1) that the Constitution should never be altered so as to authorise Congress to abolish or interfere with slavery in the States; (2) that the fugitive slave law should be amended by granting a jury trial to the fugitive; (3) that Congress recommend the repeal by the States of personal liberty acts which contravene the Constitution or the laws; (4) that Congress pass an efficient law for the punishment of all persons engaged in the armed invasion of any State from another; and (5) to admit into the Union the remaining territory belonging to the United States as two States, one north and one south of the parallel of 36 deg. 30', with the provision that these States might be subdivided and new ones erected therefrom whenever there should be sufficient population for one representative in Congress upon sixty thousand square miles.[688] Only the first of these articles was adopted. Southern Democrats objected to the second on principle, and to the third on the ground that it would affect their laws imprisoning coloured seamen, while they defeated the fourth by amending it into Douglas' suggestion for the revival of the sedition law of John Adams' administration.[689] This made it unacceptable to the Republicans. The fifth failed because it gave the South no opportunity of acquiring additional slave lands. On December 28, therefore, the committee, after adopting a resolution that it could not agree, closed its labours.

[Footnote 688: Journal of the Committee of Thirteen, pp. 10, 13.]

[Footnote 689: F.W. Seward, Life of W.H. Seward, Vol. 2, p. 484.]

This seemed to Jefferson Davis, who, in 1860, had assumed the leadership laid down by John C. Calhoun in 1850, to end all effort at compromise, and, on January 10, 1861, in a carefully prepared speech, he argued the right of secession. Finally, turning to the Republicans, he said: "Your platform on which you elected your candidate denies us equality. Your votes refuse to recognise our domestic institutions which pre-existed the formation of the Union, our property which was guarded by the Constitution. You refuse us that equality without which we should be degraded if we remained in the Union. You elect a candidate upon the basis of sectional hostility; one who, in his speeches, now thrown broadcast over the country, made a distinct declaration of war upon our institutions.... What boots it to tell me that no direct act of aggression will be made? I prefer direct to indirect hostile measures which will produce the same result. I prefer it, as I prefer an open to a secret foe. Is there a senator upon the other side who to-day will agree that we shall have equal enjoyment of the territories of the United States? Is there one who will deny that we have equally paid in their purchases, and equally bled in their acquisition in war? Then, is this the observance of your contract? Whose is the fault if the Union be dissolved?"[690]

[Footnote 690: Congressional Globe, pp. 308, 309.]

The country looked to Seward to make answer to these direct questions. Southern States were hurrying out of the Union. South Carolina had seceded on December 20, Mississippi on January 9, Florida on the 10th, and Alabama on the 11th. Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas were preparing to follow. The people felt that if a settlement was to come it must be made quickly. "Your propositions would have been most welcome if they had been made before any question of coercion, and before any vain boastings of powers," Davis had said. "But you did not make them when they would have been effective. I presume you will not make them now."[691]

[Footnote 691: Ibid., p. 307.]

If the position of the New York senator had been an embarrassing one at the Astor House on December 22, it was much more difficult on January 12. He had refused to vote for the Crittenden compromise. Moreover, the only proposition he had to make stood rejected by the South. What could he say, therefore, that would settle anything? Yet the desire to hear him was intense. An eye-witness described the scene as almost unparalleled in the Senate. "By ten o'clock," wrote this observer, "every seat in the gallery was filled, and by eleven the cloak-rooms and all the passages were choked up, and a thousand men and women stood outside the doors, although the speech was not to begin until one o'clock. Several hundred visitors came on from Baltimore. It was the fullest house of the session, and by far the most respectful one."[692] Such was the faith of the South in Seward's unbounded influence with Northern senators and Northern people that the Richmond Whig asserted that his vote for the Crittenden compromise "would give peace at once to the country."[693]

[Footnote 692: F.W. Seward, Life of W.H. Seward, Vol. 2, p. 493.]

[Footnote 693: The Richmond Whig, January 17, 1861.]

Seward was not unmindful of this influence. "My own party trusts me," he wrote, "but not without reservation. All the other parties, North and South, cast themselves upon me."[694] Judged by his letters at this period, it is suggested that he had an overweening sense of his own importance; he thought that he held in his hands the destinies of his country.[695] However this may be, it is certain that he wanted to embarrass Lincoln by no obstacles of his making. "I must gain time," he said, "for the new Administration to organise and for the frenzy of passion to subside. I am doing this, without making any compromise whatever, by forbearance, conciliation, magnanimity. What I say and do is said and done, not in view of personal objects, and I am leaving to posterity to decide upon my action and conduct."[696]

[Footnote 694: F.W. Seward, Life of W.H. Seward, Vol. 2, p. 494.]

[Footnote 695: "I will try to save freedom and my country," Seward wrote his wife.—F.W. Seward, Life of W.H. Seward, Vol. 2, p. 487. "I have assumed a sort of dictatorship for defence, and am labouring night and day with the cities and States."—Ibid., 491. "I am the only hopeful, calm, conciliatory person."—Ibid., 497. "It seems to me that if I am absent only three days, this Administration, the Congress, and the district would fall into consternation and despair."—Ibid., 497. "The present Administration and the incoming one unite in devolving upon me the responsibility of averting civil war."—Ibid., 497.]

[Footnote 696: F.W. Seward, Life of W.H. Seward, Vol. 2, p. 497.]

In this spirit Seward made his speech of January 12. He discussed the fallacies of secession, showing that it had no grounds, or even excuse, and declaring that disunion must lead to civil war. Then he avowed his adherence to the Union in its integrity and in every event, "whether of peace or of war, with every consequence of honour or dishonour, of life or death." Referring to the disorder, he said: "I know not to what extent it may go. Still my faith in the Constitution and in the Union abides. Whatever dangers there shall be, there will be the determination to meet them. Whatever sacrifices, private or public, shall be needful for the Union, they will be made. I feel sure that the hour has not come for this great nation to fall."

In blazing the new line of thought which characterised his speech at the Astor House, Seward rose to the plane of higher patriotism, and he now broadened and enlarged the idea. During the presidential campaign, he said, the struggle had been for and against slavery. That contest having ended by the success of the Republicans in the election, the struggle was now for and against the Union. "Union is not more the body than liberty is the soul of the nation. Freedom can be saved with the Union, and cannot be saved without it." He deprecated mutual criminations and recriminations, a continuance of the debate over slavery in the territories, the effort to prove secession illegal, and the right of the federal government to coerce seceding States. He wanted the Union glorified, its blessings exploited, the necessity of its existence made manifest, and the love of country substituted for the prejudice of faction and the pride of party. When this millennial day had come, when secession movements had ended and the public mind had resumed its wonted calm, then a national convention might be called—say, in one, two, or three years hence, to consider the matter of amending the Constitution.[697]

[Footnote 697: New York Tribune, January 14, 1861. Seward's Works, Vol. 4, p. 651.]

This speech was listened to with deep attention. "During the delivery of portions of it," said one correspondent, "senators were in tears. When the sad picture of the country, divided into confederacies, was given, Mr. Crittenden, who sat immediately before the orator, was completely overcome by his emotions, and bowed his white head to weep."[698] The Tribune considered it "rhetorically and as a literary performance unsurpassed by any words of Seward's earlier productions,"[699] and Whittier, charmed with its conciliatory tone, paid its author a noble tribute in one of his choicest poems.[700] But the country was disappointed. The Richmond Enquirer, representing the Virginia secessionists, maintained that it destroyed the last hope of compromise, because he gave up nothing, not even prejudices, to save peace in the Union. For the same reason, Union men of Kentucky and other border States turned from it with profound grief. On the other hand, the radical Republicans, disappointed that it did not contain more powder and shot, charged him with surrendering his principles and those of his party, to avert civil war and dissolution of the Union. But the later-day historian, however, readily admits that the rhetorical words of this admirable speech had an effectual influence in making fidelity to the Union, irrespective of previous party affiliations, a rallying point for Northern men.

[Footnote 698: F.W. Seward, Life of W.H. Seward, Vol. 2, p. 494.]

[Footnote 699: New York Tribune (editorial), January 14, 1861.]

[Footnote 700: TO WILLIAM H. SEWARD.

"Statesman, I thank thee!—and if yet dissent Mingles, reluctant, with my large content, I can not censure what was nobly meant. But while constrained to hold even Union less Than Liberty, and Truth, and Righteousness, I thank thee, in the sweet and holy name Of Peace, for wise, calm words, that put to shame Passion and party. Courage may be shown Not in defiance of the wrong alone; He may be bravest, who, unweaponed, bears The olive branch, and strong in justice spares The rash wrong-doer, giving widest scope To Christian charity, and generous hope. If without damage to the sacred cause Of Freedom, and the safeguard of its laws— If, without yielding that for which alone We prize the Union, thou canst save it now, From a baptism of blood, upon thy brow A wreath whose flowers no earthly soil has known Woven of the beatitudes, shall rest; And the peacemaker be forever blest!"]

As the recognised representative of the President-elect, Seward now came into frequent conference with loyal men of both sections and of all parties, including General Scott and the new members of Buchanan's Cabinet. John A. Dix had become secretary of the treasury, Edwin Stanton attorney-general, and Jeremiah S. Black secretary of state. Seward knew them intimately, and with Black he conferred publicly. With Stanton, however, it seemed advisable to select midnight as the hour and a basement as the place of conference. "At length," he wrote Lincoln, "I have gotten a position in which I can see what is going on in the councils of the President."[701] To his wife, he adds: "The revolution gathers apace. It has its abettors in the White House, the treasury, the interior. I have assumed a sort of dictatorship for defence."[702] He advised the President-elect to reach Washington somewhat earlier than usual, and suggested having his secretaries of war and navy designated that they might co-operate in measures for the public safety. Under his advice, on the theory that the national emblem would strengthen wavering minds and develop Union sentiment, flags began to appear on stores and private residences. Seward was ablaze with zeal. "Before I spoke," he wrote Weed, "not one utterance made for the Union elicited a response. Since I spoke, every word for the Union brings forth a cheering response."[703]

[Footnote 701: F.W. Seward, Life of W.H. Seward, Vol. 2, p. 488.]

[Footnote 702: Ibid., p. 490.]

[Footnote 703: F.W. Seward, Life of W.H. Seward, Vol. 2, p. 497.

"In regard to February, 1861, I need only say that I desired to avoid giving the secession leaders the excuse and opportunity to open the civil war before the new Administration and new Congress could be in authority to subdue it. I conferred throughout with General Scott, and Mr. Stanton, then in Mr. Buchanan's Cabinet. I presume I conversed with others in a way that seemed to me best calculated to leave the inauguration of a war to the secessionists, and to delay it, in any case, until the new Administration should be in possession of the Government. On the 22d of February, in concert with Mr. Stanton, I caused the United States flag to be displayed throughout all the northern and western portions of the United States." Letters of W.H. Seward, June 13, 1867.—William Schouler, Massachusetts in the Civil War, Vol. 1, pp. 41, 42.]

But, amidst it all, Seward's enemies persistently charged him with inclining to the support of the Crittenden compromise. "We have positive information from Washington," declared the Tribune, "that a compromise on the basis of Mr. Crittenden's is sure to be carried through Congress either this week or the next, provided a very few more Republicans can be got to enlist in the enterprise.... Weed goes with the Breckenridge Democrats.... The same is true, though less decidedly, of Seward."[704] It is probable that in the good-fellowship of after-dinner conversations Seward's optimistic words and "mysterious allusions,"[705] implied more than he intended them to convey, but there is not a private letter or public utterance on which to base the Tribune's statements. Greeley's attacks, however, became frequent now. Having at last swung round to the "no compromise" policy of the radical wing of his party, he found it easy to condemn the attitude of Weed and the Unionism of Seward, against whom his lieutenants at Albany were waging a fierce battle for his election as United States senator.

[Footnote 704: New York Tribune, January 29 and February 6, 1861.]

[Footnote 705: A writer in the North American Review (August, 1879, p. 135) speaks of the singular confidence of Siddon of Virginia (afterwards secretary of war of the Southern Confederacy) in Mr. Seward, and the mysterious allusions to the skilful plans maturing for an adjustment of sectional difficulties.]

On January 31, Seward had occasion to present a petition, with thirty-eight thousand signatures, which William E. Dodge and other business men of New York had brought to Washington, praying for "the exercise of the best wisdom of Congress in finding some plan for the adjustment of the troubles which endanger the safety of the nation," and in laying it before the Senate he took occasion to make another plea for the Union. "I have asked them," he said, "that at home they act in the same spirit, and manifest their devotion to the Union, above all other interests, by speaking for the Union, by voting for the Union, by lending and giving their money for the Union, and, in the last resort, fighting for the Union—taking care, always, that speaking goes before voting, voting goes before giving money, and all go before a battle. This is the spirit in which I have determined for myself to come up to this great question, and to pass through it."

Senator Mason of Virginia, declaring that "a maze of generalities masked the speech," pressed Seward as to what he meant by "contributing money for the Union." Seward replied: "I have recommended to them in this crisis, that they sustain the government of this country with the credit to which it is entitled at their hands." To this Mason said: "I took it for granted that the money was to sustain the army which was to conduct the fight that he recommends to his people." Seward responded: "If, then, this Union is to stand or fall by the force of arms, I have advised my people to do, as I shall be ready to do myself—stand with it or perish with it." To which the Virginia Senator retorted: "The honourable senator proposes but one remedy to restore this Union, and that is the ultima ratio regna." Seward answered quickly, "Not to restore—preserve!"

Mason then referred to Seward's position as one of battle and bloodshed, to be fought on Southern soil, for the purpose of reducing the South to colonies. To Seward, who was still cultivating the attitude of "forbearance, conciliation, and magnanimity," this sounded like a harsh conclusion of the position he had sought to sugar-coat with much rhetoric, and, in reply, he pushed bloodshed into the far-off future by restating what he had already declared in fine phrases, closing as follows: "Does not the honourable senator know that when all these [suggestions for compromise] have failed, then the States of this Union, according to the forms of the Constitution, shall take up this controversy about twenty-four negro slaves scattered over a territory of one million and fifty thousand square miles, and say whether they are willing to sacrifice all this liberty, all this greatness, and all this hope, because they have not intelligence, wisdom, and virtue enough to adjust a controversy so frivolous and contemptible."[706]

[Footnote 706: W.H. Seward, Works of, Vol. 4, p. 670. Congressional Globe, 1861, p. 657.]

Seward's speech plainly indicated a purpose to fight for the preservation of the Union, and his talk of first exhausting conciliatory methods was accepted in the South simply as a "resort to the gentle powers of seduction,"[707] but his argument of the few slaves in the great expanse of territory sounded so much like Weed, who was advocating with renewed strength the Crittenden plan along similar lines of devotion to the Union, that it kept alive in the North the impression that the Senator would yet favour compromise, and gave Greeley further opportunity to assail him. "Seward, in his speech on Thursday last," says the Tribune, "declares his readiness to renounce Republican principles for the sake of the Union."[708] The next day his strictures were more pronounced. "The Republican party ... is to be divided and sacrificed if the thing can be done. We are boldly told it must be suppressed, and a Union party rise upon its ruins."[709] Yet, in spite of such criticism, Seward bore himself with indomitable courage and with unfailing skill. Never during his whole career did he prove more brilliant and resourceful as a leader in what might be called an utterly hopeless parliamentary struggle for the preservation of the Union, and the highest tributes[710] paid to his never-failing tact and temper during some of the most vivid and fascinating passages of congressional history, attest his success. It was easy to say, with Senator Chandler of Michigan, that "without a little blood-letting this Union will not be worth a rush,"[711] but it required great skill to speak for the preservation of the Union and the retention of the cornerstone of the Republican party, without grieving the Unionists of the border States, or painfully affecting the radical Republicans of the Northern States. Seward knew that the latter censured him, and in a letter to the Independent he explains the cause of it. "Twelve years ago," he wrote, "freedom was in danger and the Union was not. I spoke then so singly for freedom that short-sighted men inferred that I was disloyal to the Union. To-day, practically, freedom is not in danger, and Union is. With the attempt to maintain Union by civil war, wantonly brought on, there would be danger of reaction against the Administration charged with the preservation of both freedom and Union. Now, therefore, I speak singly for Union, striving, if possible, to save it peaceably; if not possible, then to cast the responsibility upon the party of slavery. For this singleness of speech I am now suspected of infidelity to freedom."[712]

[Footnote 707: "Oily Gammon Seward, aware that intimidation will not do, is going to resort to the gentle powers of seduction."—Washington correspondent of Charleston Mercury, February 19, 1861.]

[Footnote 708: New York Tribune, February 4, 1861.]

[Footnote 709: New York Tribune, February 5, 1861.]

[Footnote 710: "I have rejoiced, as you of New York must certainly have done, in the spirit of conciliation which has repeatedly been manifested, during the present session of Congress, by your distinguished senator, Governor Seward." Robert C. Winthrop to the Constitutional Union Committee of Troy, February 17.—Winthrop's Addresses and Speeches, Vol. 2, p. 701. "If Mr. Seward moves in favour of compromise, the whole Republican party sways like a field of grain before his breath." Letter of Oliver Wendell Holmes, February 16, 1861.—Motley's Correspondence, Vol. 1, p. 360.]

[Footnote 711: Detroit Post and Tribune; Life of Zachariah Chandler, p. 189.]

[Footnote 712: Letter to Dr. Thompson of the New York Independent. F.W. Seward, Life of W.H. Seward, Vol. 2, p. 507.]

Lincoln, after his arrival in Washington, asked Seward to suggest such changes in his inaugural address as he thought advisable, and in the performance of this delicate duty the New York Senator continued his policy of conciliation. "I have suggested," he wrote, in returning the manuscript, "many changes of little importance, severally, but in their general effect, tending to soothe the public mind. Of course the concessions are, as they ought to be, if they are to be of avail, at the cost of the winning, the triumphant party. I do not fear their displeasure. They will be loyal whatever is said. Not so the defeated, irritated, angered, frenzied party.... Your case is quite like that of Jefferson. He brought the first Republican party into power against and over a party ready to resist and dismember the government. Partisan as he was, he sank the partisan in the patriot, in his inaugural address; and propitiated his adversaries by declaring, 'We are all Federalists; all Republicans.' I could wish that you would think it wise to follow this example, in this crisis. Be sure that while all your administrative conduct will be in harmony with Republican principles and policy, you cannot lose the Republican party by practising, in your advent to office, the magnanimity of a victor."[713]

[Footnote 713: F.W. Seward, Life of W.H. Seward, Vol. 2, p. 512.]

Of thirty-four changes suggested by Seward, the President-elect adopted twenty-three outright, and based modifications on eight others. Three were ignored. Upon only one change did the Senator really insist. He thought the two paragraphs relating to the Republican platform adopted at Chicago should be omitted, and, in obedience to his judgment, Lincoln left them out. Seward declared the argument of the address strong and conclusive, and ought not in any way be changed or modified, "but something besides, or in addition to argument, is needful," he wrote in a postscript, "to meet and remove prejudice and passion in the South, and despondency and fear in the East. Some words of affection. Some of calm and cheerful confidence."[714] In line with this suggestion, he submitted the draft of two concluding paragraphs. The first, "made up of phrases which had become extremely commonplace by iteration in the six years' slavery discussion," was clearly inadmissible.[715] The second was as follows: "I close. We are not, we must not be, aliens or enemies, but fellow countrymen and brethren. Although passion has strained our bonds of affection too hardly, they must not, I am sure they will not, be broken. The mystic chords which, proceeding from so many battlefields and so many patriot graves, pass through all the hearts and all the hearths in this broad continent of ours, will yet again harmonise in their ancient music when breathed upon by the guardian angel of the nation."

[Footnote 714: F.W. Seward, Life of W.H. Seward, Vol. 3, p. 513.]

[Footnote 715: Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln, Vol. 3, p. 343, note.]

This was the germ of a fine poetic thought, says John Hay, that "Mr. Lincoln took, and, in a new development and perfect form, gave to it the life and spirit and beauty which have made it celebrated." As it appears in the President-elect's clear, firm handwriting, it reads as follows: "I am loth to close. We are not enemies but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."[716]

[Footnote 716: Ibid., pp. 343, 344, and note.

For fac-simile of the paragraph as written by Seward and rewritten by Lincoln, see Ibid., Vol. 3, p. 336. For the entire address, with all suggested and adopted changes, see Ibid., Vol. 3, pp. 327 to 344.

At Seward's dinner table on the evening of March 4, the peroration of the inaugural address was especially commended by A. Oakey Hall, afterward mayor of New York, who quickly put it into rhyme:

"The mystic chords of Memory That stretch from patriot graves; From battlefields to living hearts, Or hearth-stones freed from slaves, An Union chorus shall prolong, And grandly, proudly swell, When by those better angels touched Who in all natures dwell."]

The spirit that softened Lincoln's inaugural into an appeal that touched every heart, had breathed into the debates of Congress the conciliation and forbearance that marked the divide between the conservative and radical Republican. This difference, at the last moment, occasioned Lincoln much solicitude. He had come to Washington with his Cabinet completed except as to a secretary of the treasury and a secretary of war. For the latter place Seward preferred Simon Cameron, and, in forcing the appointment by his powerful advocacy, he dealt a retributive blow to Governor Curtin of Pennsylvania, who had vigorously opposed him at Chicago and was now the most conspicuous of Cameron's foes.[717] But Senator Chase of Ohio, to whom Seward strenuously objected because of his uncompromising attitude, was given the treasury. The shock of this defeat led the New York Senator to decline entering the Cabinet. "Circumstances which have occurred since I expressed my willingness to accept the office of secretary of state," he wrote, on March 2, "seem to me to render it my duty to ask leave to withdraw that consent."[718]

[Footnote 717: "Seward and his friends were greatly offended at the action of Curtin at Chicago. I was chairman of the Lincoln state committee and fighting the pivotal struggle of the national battle, but not one dollar of assistance came from New York, and my letters to Thurlow Weed and to Governor Morgan, chairman of the national committee, were unanswered. Seward largely aided the appointment of a Cabinet officer in Pennsylvania, who was the most conspicuous of Curtin's foes, and on Curtin's visit to Seward as secretary of state, he gave him such a frigid reception that he never thereafter called at that department."—Alex. K. McClure, Recollections of Half a Century, p. 220.]

[Footnote 718: Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln, Vol. 3, p. 370.]

The reception of the unexpected note sent a shiver through Lincoln's stalwart form. This was the man of men with whom for weeks he had confidentially conferred, and upon whose judgment and information he had absolutely relied and acted, "I cannot afford to let Seward take the first trick," he said to his secretary,[719] after pondering the matter during Sunday, and on Monday morning, while the inauguration procession was forming, he penned a reply. "Your note," he said, "is the subject of the most painful solicitude with me; and I feel constrained to beg that you will countermand the withdrawal. The public interest, I think, demands that you should; and my personal feelings are deeply enlisted in the same direction. Please consider and answer by nine o'clock a.m. to-morrow." That night, after the day's pageant and the evening's reception had ended, the President and Seward talked long and confidentially, resulting in the latter's withdrawal of his letter and his nomination and confirmation as secretary of state. "The President is determined that he will have a compound Cabinet," Seward wrote his wife, a few days after the unhappy incident; "and that it shall be peaceful, and even permanent. I was at one time on the point of refusing—nay, I did refuse, for a time, to hazard myself in the experiment. But a distracted country appeared before me, and I withdrew from that position. I believe I can endure as much as any one; and may be that I can endure enough to make the experiment successful."[720]

[Footnote 719: Ibid., Vol. 3, p. 371.]

[Footnote 720: F.W. Seward, Life of W.H. Seward, Vol. 2, p. 518.]



CHAPTER XXIX

THE WEED MACHINE CRIPPLED

1861

The story of the first forty days of Lincoln's administration is one of indecent zeal to obtain office. A new party had come into power, and, in the absence of any suggestion of civil service, patronage was conceded to the political victors. Office-seekers in large numbers had visited Washington in 1841 after the election of President Harrison, and, in the change that followed the triumph of Taylor in 1848, Seward, then a new senator, complained of their pernicious activity. Marcy as secretary of state found them no less numerous and insistent in 1853 when the Whigs again gave way to the Democrats. But never in the history of the country had such a cloud of applicants settled down upon the capital of the nation as appeared in 1861. McClure, an eye-witness of the scene, speaks of the "mobs of office-seekers,"[721] and Edwin M. Stanton, who still remained in Washington, wrote Buchanan that "the scramble for office is terrific. Every department is overrun, and by the time all the patronage is distributed the Republican party will be dissolved."[722] Schuyler Colfax declared to his mother that "it makes me heart-sick. All over the country our party is by the ears, fighting for offices."[723] Seward, writing to his wife on March 16, speaks of the affliction. "My duties call me to the White House one, two, or three times a day. The grounds, halls, stairways, closets, are filled with applicants, who render ingress and egress difficult."[724] Lincoln himself said: "I seem like one sitting in a palace, assigning apartments to importunate applicants, while the structure is on fire and likely soon to perish in ashes."[725] Stanton is authority for the statement "that Lincoln takes the precaution of seeing no stranger alone."[726]